EA Has Listened: Mass Effect 3 Receives Free Extended Cut DLC

Fans have been overtly complaining about Mass Effect 3’s ending for weeks now. Fortunately for those who wanted the game’s ending fixed, Electronic Arts has announced Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut. The Extended Cut will allegedly offer more “cinematic sequences and epilogue scenes,” but the ending itself won’t change. In my opinion, EA shouldn’t address the ending, but I still understand that being able to remain calm when thousands of players actively complain about the controversial ending, The Consumerist names you the worst company in America and myriad online petitions are made, is almost impossible.

The DLC is coming out this summer (in North America at least) for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC and it’ll expand certain events that take place at the end of the game, but no specifics were provided, so I guess players will have to wait until then to see how this content affects their experience with the last moments of the science-fiction role-playing game. It’s worth pointing out that even though the Extended Cut version will be free, those who are interesting in getting it will have a limited amount of time to pick it up as EA has officially stated that players will have until April 12, 2014 to claim the DLC.

According to Executive Producer Casey Hudson, Mass Effect 3 post released content has been “re-prioritized.” This happened as a result of the complaints of unhappy fans which eventually led to the upcoming release of the Extended Cut downloadable content pack. Those who would like to have additional details about the announcement should visit Bioware’s official website where an article about this has been posted.

I’m pretty sure developing a downloadable content pack like this must be extremely challenging for Bioware. On the one hand, there are fans who are pleased with the ending and don’t want the story to be expanded. On the other hand, there are those who hated the ending and want closure and more “personalized” events. This DLC will try to appeal both types of players (I guess EA and Bioware don’t want any more angry e-mails) so if you’re a fan of the series and you wanted more content that will be available soon and for free, this is definitely for you.

What’s your opinion about this? Do you think this DLC will offer the closure you were looking for? Would you play it or are you happy with the game’s ending as it is? Will this address all the fans’ complaints?